Search This Blog

Subscribe to this blog

Follow by Email

NIGERIA: No Record Of How Obasanjo, Jonathan Spend $5bn

ABUJA (PM NEWS)--The Federal Government has told the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) that it has no records of the exact amount of public funds stolen by a former military head of state, Sani Abacha and no records of the spending of about $5 billion recovered loot for the period between 1999 and 2015.

Three presidents ruled Nigeria between 1999 and 2015. They are Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo, Umaru Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan.

The government’s response followed SERAP’s Freedom of Information (FoI) requests sent to Mr Abukabar Malami, SAN, Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice and Mrs Zainab Ahmed, Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, requesting: “information on the exact amount of public funds stolen by Abacha, and details of spending of about $5 billion recovered loot since the return of democracy in 1999.”

According to SERAP, only Mr Malami has sent a reply to its FoI requests. In the reply dated 26 February 2020 but which SERAP said it received 9 March 2020, Mr Malami said: “We have searched our records and the information on the exact amount of public funds stolen by Abacha and how recovered loot was spent from 1999–2015 is not held by the Ministry.”

Mr Malami also said: “However, a total of $322 million was recovered from Switzerland in January 2018 and the funds were used for Social Investment Project. Also, $308 million was recovered from the Island of Jersey in collaboration with the USA. While awaiting the transfer of the money to Nigeria, it has been designated for the following projects: Lagos—Ibadan Expressway; Abuja—Kano Expressway, and Second Niger Bridge.”

Dissatisfied with Mr Malami’s reply, SERAP deputy director Kolawole Oluwadare said: “The failure to provide information on the exact amount stolen by Abacha and on spending of recovered loot for the period between 1999 and 2015 implicitly amounts to a refusal by the government. The government also failed to provide sufficient details on the spending and planned spending of the $630 million it said it recovered since 2018.”

In the statement dated 15 March, 2020, SERAP said: “in the circumstances and given that Mrs Zainab Ahmed has failed and/or refused to response to our FoI request, we are finalising the papers for legal actions under the FoI Act to compel the government of President Muhammadu Buhari to fully and effectively comply with our requests.”

Mr Malami’s reply with reference number MJ/FOI/REQ/035/11/34, was signed on his behalf by Hamza Adeyinka Omolara, Principal Counsel at the Ministry of Justice.

It would be recalled that SERAP’s FoI requests expressed: “concerns that substantial part of the estimated $5 billion returned Abacha loot since 1999 may have been diverted, re-stolen or mismanaged, and in any case remain unaccounted for.”

The FoI requests dated 14 February 2020, read in part: “the Federal Government should disclose details of projects executed with the Abacha loot and their locations, details of companies and contractors involved in the execution of any such projects, details of all the agreements on the loot, the roles played by the World Bank and other actors, as well as the implementation status of all projects since 1999.

“Publishing the details of projects on which Abacha loot has been spent would allow the public to know the specific projects carried and the areas of the country in which the projects have been implemented as well as the officials that may be responsible for any alleged diversion or mismanagement of the loot.

“According to our information, a special panel set up on 23 July 1998 by the former head of state General Abdulsalami Abubakar to probe the late military dictator General Sani Abacha stated that he stole over $5 billion between 1993 and 1998 when he was in power. Much of the stolen public funds have been returned to Nigeria.

“The report by the panel shows that the government recovered some $635 million, £75 million, DM 30 million and N9 billion as well as several vehicles and properties in Abuja, Lagos and Kano together with 40% interests in West African Refinery in Sierra Leone. Other assets were recovered from the Abacha family and associates.

“Furthermore, former president Olusegun Obasanjo administration also reportedly recovered over $2 billion of Abacha loot. Mr Obasanjo would seem to confirm this fact when he stated in the second volume of his book titled My Watch that: ‘by the time I left office in May 2007, over $2 billion and £100 million had been recovered from the Abacha family abroad, and N10 billion in cash and properties locally.

“Similarly, former president Goodluck Jonathan administration reportedly recovered $226.3 million and €7.5 Million from Liechtenstein. Some £22.5 million was also recovered from the Island of Jersey while $322 million and £5.5 million from the Abacha loot were reportedly returned to the government.

“The government of president Muhammadu Buhari has also recovered several millions of dollars of Abacha loot since assuming office in May 2015, including $321 million from Switzerland, and $300 million from the US and Jersey.”

Comments

Igbo Journal Review

BIAFRA

Translate

Popular Posts

I had called Mike Egi, compiler of Flashback 1 & 2 a couple of days ago to see if he made it back from his trip to Naija on an expedition to dig out master tapes of 70s local ensembles that kept body and soul one. Mike had told me his journey was very "disappointing" and somehow was not worth the trip.

He trooped to Pound Road, Aba, and according to him the road was so bad it took more than two hours to drive through a couple of miles. He had gone there to look for original albums of the Wings, The Apostles, Action and many other old-school jams of the day. We talked for nearly two hours on the phone and it was quite engaging. I had written a piece in the past about these old school jams and that's how we hooked up. Mike lives in St. Paul.

For a while now, I have been searching for some of these rare LPs. I have digged every archive but could only be that lucky. Some are there, some not. Mike also noted how bad in shape these 70s musicians were when he ran into them…

On Easter Monday, as we usually called it back home, I was invited by a good friend over dinner and some drinks, and some talks. While we ate and drank, we talked about a whole lot of stuff including the new arrivals on the book shelves -- Caught Between Hitler & Stalin; From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women; A Constitution of Many Minds: Why the Founding Document Doesn't Mean What It Mean Before; Founders: The People Who Brought You A nation; ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen "High Value Detainees" in CIA Custody; The political Worlds Of Slavery And Freedom; Nazi Germany and the Jews; The Black Death; Engaging The Muslim World; Hitler's Pope; Captives and Countrymen: Barbary Slavery and the American Public; The Irony of American History; Adolf Eichman and many other books that just arrived on the shelves, particularly about the Holocaust. He is disgusted with Nd'Igbo and why nobody is writing with regards to the pogrom.

LAGOS, NIGERIA (THE NEW GONG)--Afrika Shrine - The Shrine - was the central concept around which Fela Anikulapo-Kuti organized his show business and at the same time expressed his art and his politics. The routine consisted essentially of three shows a week: Friday, Gbegbegbe (noise-making) night, which featured only music and none of the political jibes and outrageous jokes he was known for; Saturday, Comprehensive Show, which featured the famous yabis sessions when Fela called things by their name in the tradition of African night spirits, sometimes pleasing and outraging the audience at the
same time; and Tuesday, Ladies Night, when ladies were allowed in free.

Fela would usually speak for between five and 20 minutes, depending on his mood, passing comments on current events, trading barbs with the audience or abusing the forever inept authorities. But on this particular…

I’m not sure if I should say one is now hooked to Nigerian movies, the Nollywood and fourth-ranked movie industry on the Planet. I have been watching quite a lot lately but I do have a problem with the plots and the titles. They all seem to be the same. Like “Girls Cot” which marks the genuine return of Genevieve Nnaji after a long sabbatical. It has the same resemblance of Nollywood’s previous projects which much appears they have ran out of stories and better creative stuff.

Nollywood should come out bold and start telling stories of human events and tragic moments of our time and beyond. Like Hollywood’s “Shindler’s List,” “We Were Soldiers,” “Pearl Harbor,” "Gangs of New York," “Platoon,” “Hotel Rwanda,” “The Pianist,” “The Holocaust,” “Flags of Our Fathers,” “Letters From Iwo Jima,” “Malcolm X,” “Amistad,” and many more films of that nature, it would be worthy of Nollywood to start producing movies in the same manner with scenes like “Blood on the Niger,” "Aba Mar…

It was a weekend of a two weeks event which climaxed the Summer and folks from all walks of life had trooped in to get a feel of motherland Africa which has been since its inception -- the stuff of life and a great stuff of African cultural heritage. It is, in fact, the stuff of great literature.

Once more, the event took me aback to the days of Orie Amigwe, the once notable marketplace for second hand clothes, produce from organics, poking around and bargains for better deals haggling for money and things like that when a plundered and demolished Igbo nation had begun to start life anew after Yakubu Gowon's-led Genocidal campaign against a desperately starved Igbo children including infants and women.

But somehow the 2008 African Marketplace and Cultural Faire was a unique event considering an economy that has gone so bad and people are still happy at a time of going through the pains of hopelessness was very obvious. Sitting on the playgrounds of Dorsey High Scho…

When the framers of the Constitution created the process for Congress to impeach “all civil officers of the United States,” they rejected a much more severe punishment practiced in early America: exile.

That threat was real in the early colonial period. In 17th-century New England, Puritan authorities banished individuals who challenged their rule. Those who challenged orthodox religious teaching or the administration of the colonies found themselves sent to other colonies or, on occasion, to England.

Three cases – the lay minister Anne Hutchinson, Rhode Island founder Roger Williams and the thrice-exiled lawyer Thomas Morton – reveal that the founders understood the difference between actions that posed a threat to the state and those that required less severe punishment, even when the crimes had been committed by those holding high political office.

Makoko is a slum neighborhood located in Lagos, Nigeria. At present its population is considered to be 85,840; however, the area was not officially counted as part of the 2007 census and the population today is considered to be much higher. Established in the 18th century primarily as a fishing village, much of Makoko rests in structures constructed on stilts above Lagos Lagoon. Today the area is essentially self-governing with a very limited government presence in the community and local security being provided by area boys. The government of Lagos State commenced the demolition of the shanty settlement on Monday , 16th July 2012 after giving the residents a 72 hour eviction notice. Thousands of the settlers were affected by this government action. This is the end of over 100 years of settlement by this community. (SOURCE: WIKI)

Female hawker paddling canoe and selling garri in the Makoko slums of Lagos which is being demolished by the Lagos State Government after a 72-hour eviction n…

In August 2006, Namibian model Venantia Otto celebrates when she was announced the winner of the Nokia Face of Africa competition held in South Africa.

The show seems to be gaining ground as this years competition is said to be better and more attractive. According to the Sunday Standard Reporter which reported a week ago that "an unprecedented winner prize of USD 50 000 in cash and a three year modeling contract with Oluchi’s dynamic O Model Africa agency, the new season of Face of Africa is set to be the best yet!"

Venantia did it again. Her steps and walk at this year's Cannes Film Festival in France spoke volumes. Go Africa!

Earlier this year, newspapers around BiafraNigeria carried headlines about a crime syndicate, the Otokoto mafia, which spooked Owerri Township and its neighboring suburbs with acts of murder, mutilaton, and illegal human parts trafficking.

On January 23, 2003, Justice Chioma Nwosu Iheme, the presiding judge in Owerri in the Otokoto case, handed down judgment and condemned Chief Vincent Duru Otokoto, the patriarch of the Otokoto family, and six others to death.

Last week in Los Angeles, Maxwell Vincent Duru Otokoto, the first son of the convicted Chief Duru Otokoto, sat down with BiafraNigeriaWorld’s Los Angeles Bureau Chief, Ambrose Ehrim. According to Maxwell Otokoto, his father’s conviction was a set-up and conspiracy. This is the other side of the Otokoto story.

Nnamdi Azikiwe arriving at the Idlewild Airport, New York, from London July 05, 1959 to attend the United Nations Special Session on Africa. Image: Bettmann Collection

BY AMBROSE EHIRIM

In 1999, after the Jim Nwobodo bunch sold out the Igbo presidency lot, handing Alex Ekwueme a stunning defeat at the Jos primaries which gave Olusegun Obasanjo the upper hand for his party’s nomination as the flagbearer to the presidential elections, I said “the Igbo presidency is a mirage.” I made it patently clear again during the drive to Obasanjo’s reelection in 2003 that an Igbo mandate was still a mirage. Then, and again, when Obasanjo handpicked a bedridden Umaru Yar’Adua and a clueless Goodluck Jonathan PDP ticket, I said the Igbo mandate would continue to be a mirage. As it happened, a lucky Jonathan, who by accident succeeded Yar’Adua, who had succumbed to a long-hidden ailment, was tested when he ran on his own ticket in April 2011. Upon Jonathan’s swearing in to commence his first term as an…